Agnes Macphail was elected to parliament in Canada in 1921, the first election after women gained the right to vote in 1919.  She was re-elected five more times to represent the area where she was born, first Grey-South-East, later expanded to Grey-Bruce.  Each year the City of Toronto declares March 24^th, the day she was born in 1890, to be Agnes Macphail Day.  It is celebrated in East York, the area of Toronto that elected her twice to the Ontario Legislature (in 1941 and 1948) with an evening of song and speeches in her honour, culminating with the presentation of the annual Agnes Macphail Award to an outstanding resident of East York who continues Agnes’ work in the   areas of women’s rights, penal reform, education, international peace and access to housing, among other public service endeavours.

This year my husband Ross and I were delighted to be asked to give jointly the key-note address.  We chose to talk about “The Macphail Connection” and how Agnes was a deciding factor in both our lives.  Ross is related to her and grew up just a few miles from her farm home.  His father was her second cousin and Ross lived his youth with stories of Agnes being shared around the kitchen table.  Her periodic visits to the Milne home set the tone for his later involvement in Federal politics.  He remembers clearly those visits when he was very young and his certainty that whatever it was she was doing he wanted to do it too.  Ross spoke of her early life, her involvement with his parents and how it inspired him to run for parliament.  He mentioned particularly the affinity     between his own mother and Agnes.  They both left home early in their lives to train as teachers, and then taught at many of the same one-room rural schools during their teaching careers.

My very first memory is of toddling across a stage to present some flowers to an extremely important woman; Agnes of course.  I related the story of her service in the Ontario Legislature, elected in the same two elections and sharing a seat with my father Bill Dennison, my mother’s admiration of what Agnes had accomplished, and the story of how she inspired the formation of the Elizabeth Fry Society by a group of Toronto Unitarian women.  My mother was at that meeting and spoke of it all her life.  I was recently astounded to see that my mother had an early photograph of Agnes framed and placed beside her usual chair in the condominium where my mother died just a few years ago in Florida.  Mother’s admiration of Agnes lasted to the end of her life.

Ross and I are also the ‘keepers’ of the bible that Dougald McPhail, the forefather of Agnes’ Macphail family, brought along with his large family to this country when they all immigrated in the 1840s. We both shared many personal anecdotes with the audience and I ended by telling of my great fortune, as the family genealogist to have received an original carbon copy of the manuscript she finished just days, perhaps hours, before her death in 1954, “Our Ain Folk”.  She ended it with the prophetic words, “the blood is strong and the memory of our ain folk goes with us to the end.”

The winner of the 2009 Agnes Macphail Award is Pat Moore, an impressive woman who volunteers hours of her busy life to help people with housing problems in areas of East York and Flemingdon Park, as well as many other volunteer activities to help her community.

 

Senator Milne and her husband Ross seen here with Pat Moore, winner of the 2009 Agnes Macphail Award.

 

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